This application claims the benefit of EP 16184054.1, filed on Aug. 12, 2016, and EP 16186665.2, filed on Aug. 31, 2016, which are hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety.
The present embodiments relate to techniques for monitoring technical equipment.
Process plants have a variety of technical equipment for example, but not limited to, equipment used in Chemical plants, Petrochemical and refineries, Pulp and Paper Mills, Boiler controls and power plant systems, Power generation plants, Nuclear power plants, Water management systems, Water treatment plants, Sewage treatment plants, Food/Beverage plants, Agro chemical and fertilizer plants, Metal/Metal alloys manufacturing or extraction plants and mines, Metallurgical process plants, Automobile manufacturing plants, Pharmaceutical manufacturing plants, Refining plants such as Sugar refineries, product manufacturing and processing plants such as cement manufacturing plants and so on and so forth. The technical equipment is required to be constantly or periodically monitored for desired function and states for example in a power generation plant using a gas turbine as equipment a state of the gas turbine—operational or idle or start-up phase etc needs to be monitored constantly or periodically for optimum production of power from the gas turbine. The equipment is monitored by collecting inputs, or event inputs, such as sensor readings associated with the equipment, inputs provided by local process controllers or controllers at different levels as in distributed control systems to the central control system, and so on and so forth. An example of an event is vibrations reaching a predefined frequency in a gas turbine and an example of corresponding event input may be a frequency of vibrations detected by a suitable sensor associated with the gas turbine. Other examples of event inputs may be, but not limited to, a temperature of a boiler as detected by a temperature sensor, or alarms generated from alarm systems when certain equipment is detected to be in a particular state.
The event inputs, for example the alarms, are presented to an operator and the event inputs informs the operator about the events, some of which may be critical events, occurring during the run of a machine as an example of equipment. Each event input may belong to an event type or an event category, for example temperature readings may belong to event category named thermal state of the boiler. Different event categories and associated event inputs in the event categories may have different meanings for example warnings for information on changes of the system state such as change of equipment state, alarms if critical system states are reached, messages regarding operator/controller actions to the equipment, system responses as in equipment responses, messages from operator station/automation station, predictive maintenance request, etc.
At least some of the events may require an operator or controller reaction/response corresponding to the event input. A timely reaction to the event may prevent or reverse a loss of production quality or damage to a machine. However, typically lots of events are simultaneously and/or successively occurring in a given time period in the process plant and thus lots of event inputs may be presented to the operator/controller. A problem thereby is the often overwhelming amount of the event inputs, for example alarms, that the operator/controller has to deal with on a daily basis and within a short period of time within the day. This relates to events such as alarms, warnings and predictive maintenance requests.
One of the approaches to address the above mentioned problem may be to address or respond to those event inputs that have a high priority or frequency or ranking. This necessitates need for a technique to effectively monitor technical equipment such that event inputs that have a high priority or frequency or ranking are addressed first.